


What is Owed

by ladyofrosefire



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Partners in Crime, non-explicit references to assault, non-explicit references to non-consensual drug use, non-explicit violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofrosefire/pseuds/ladyofrosefire
Summary: Elves take debts seriously.Or: the story of how Cadi Fel and Galliard became partners.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	What is Owed

**Author's Note:**

> I love this girl

The first time Cadi saw the tiefling, he was backed into a corner with two of Utkin’s goons looming over him— one half-orc, one human, both scarred and mean looking. Ordinarily, she gave them as wide a berth as she could. They were the kind of trouble that held neither interest nor profit for her. And Utkin was a slimy, grabby bastard who had an unfortunate habit of taking everything personally. But the thing was that she _recognized_ these two. She’d seen Liza and Dotya sitting together at a table in the Royal Pockets, looking scared, and when she’d asked, they’d named these two.

So.

Cadi steeled herself, then crept to the edge of the roof. She braced her boots against the slate tiles. Her rapier made a soft shushing sound as she drew it from its sheath. None of the men looked up.

“Listen,” the tiefling said, reaching out to rest a hand on the human’s shoulder, “I know we got off on the wrong foot, here—”

Steel glinted in the half-orc’s hand.

Cadi lept from the roof.

She came down on top of the man, her rapier piercing just behind his collarbone, through one lung. his heart, and out between two ribs on the other side of his chest. She was on the ground and rolling away, blade still clutched in her blood-slick hand, almost before anyone had noticed what had happened. The half-orc dropped. The human whirled on her.

Cadi looked past him to the tiefling. “ _Run_.”

He found her again two alleys over, holding a deep gash in her side and swearing at the dead man who had cut her. She whipped out a dagger when he approached. He was a darker red than the blood that spilled between her fingers. His eyes and the jewelry on his curling horns were gold. In the darkness, he looked like a demon.

“Hey.”

She kept her knife drawn.

“You’re going to be alright.”

There was a strange reverberation in his voice. Cadi hissed as she felt her skin move. The cut sealed, and the blood ceased to flow.

“Bard, then?” she asked, getting to her feet.

“Galliard,” he swept a bow, pointed teeth flashing in the dying light, “pleased to meet you.”

“Cadi,” she replied. For a moment, she considered telling him to piss off. Then she held out her bloody hand. “Likewise.”

He bought her a meal and a drink, which she accepted. While he was busy flirting with the woman who brought them over, she switched the bowls of stew. If he had tried to give her something, she would know soon enough. Cadi kept her back to the wall and drank her water and ate a hot meal. The last of the tremors left her limbs, and her new companion did not seem to be in any way harmed by his food.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked finally.

They’d been chatting about nothing, words bouncing back and forth between them, but it had all been coming to this, of course.

She shrugged. “I didn’t like them. And you didn’t seem like you deserved what they were going to do to you.”

“Too pretty to die?”

She stole his bread roll.

“So, what,” he snatched about half of it back, “do you just run around saving people?”

Cadi swallowed the mouthful she’d already taken out of it. “If I ran around saving every idiot in the Lower Docks who didn’t deserve to get stabbed, I’d never have time to sleep.”

She came to one of his performances out in the market square. Which was a fancy way of saying she perched on a roof with her cloak wrapped around herself and watched while he danced and sang and people tossed coins to him. She could not count them from where she sat, but it looked like decent coin, _and_ he got to keep his clothes on. He didn’t have to kill anyone, either.

She made sure to catch his attention as she stood. It meant a few others saw her, but that was fine. Cadi curtseyed, turned, ran three paces, and did a flip onto the next roof. Then she took off running, ignoring the angry shouts of guards from below.

Galliard found her at the Royal again, sitting at the same table they had occupied the last time. Without a word, she pushed a cup of ale across to his chair. He joined her but did not sit. She could see the point of his tail flicking back and forth.

“What’d you think of the show?”

“Flashy. Missing something. But very flashy.”

He laughed. It showed the points of his fangs, and the light of the fire flashed off the jewelry on his horns. Then he held out a hand to her.

Cadi looked at it.

Galliard sighed and beckoned. “C’mon. You’ve danced before, right?”

“A few times.”

She got to her feet and took his hand. The music was shit, but he was the bard; he didn’t need her to tell him that. And shit music or not, he was an excellent dancer. She just kept her feet moving. It was more complicated than any of the country dances she’d done before, but it made sense. At the end, he spun her out, and she curtseyed. He bowed back. Both of them were grinning.

“Partners?” he asked.

She did not bother pretending to consider first.

Cadi did not have much to pack up. She had a shortbow and arrows, her rapier, two daggers, string, ball bearings, a tarnished silver bell, beeswax candles, a crowbar, a hammer, ten pitons accumulated piecemeal over the last few years. A hooded lantern that had cost her five gold, two flasks of oil, a tinderbox, a waterskin, and her lockpicks. She bought enough food for the next five days, counting out the two gold and five silver with less trepidation than she had expected. A new blanket, one that was warm enough to bother with on the road, was another five pieces of silver. The tent and the coil of heavy rope she stole while Galliard kept the owner of the shop busy.

They stopped for a meal before they left the city. She twirled and smiled and was as charming as she could be until the inn’s patrons let her close enough to slip her hands into their pockets. And all the while, Galliard played. And true, it was less honest than half of her work before, but it felt better.

At least it did until the doors burst open.

She turned, expecting Utkin’s goons, and almost froze at the sight of black coats emblazoned with a symbol that, at this distance, looked like an X. It was a halberd and baton crossed, the crest of house Sobol.

She grabbed the nearest pitcher and threw it into the center of a knot of particularly rowdy looking travelers. Then she dashed toward Galliard.

“We have to—” he called

“Run!”

“Right behind you.”

Galliard brought his hand down hard on a drum. A ripple rolled out from the point of contact. When it struck the nearest tables, they went flying into the path of the oncoming guards.

They stopped in a small cluster of trees for the night. Their packhorse grazed a yard or two off. Cadi knelt over a tiny flame, carefully feeding it twigs until it grew large enough to start adding branches.

“So, I know why they were after me, but why’d they chase you?” Galliard asked.

She carefully did not glance up. “Who says they were?”

“The guard yelling ‘there she is.’”

Cadi shot him a look. “Smug looks awful on you.” It wasn’t true, exactly, but it was close enough for now. She sat back on her heels with a sigh. “I… _may_ have stabbed Yevgeni Sobol through the hand. He earned it.”

“I took about two hundred gold off of him pretending to sell him magic.” He tapped a horn.

She nodded. That was fair. She’d played the faery princess more than once to get a few extra coins. If he wanted to play demon sorcerer, that was his business. And if The Dishonorable Dickhead wanted to believe that, well. She would just enjoy hearing about it.

Cadi jabbed the fire with a stick and then settled cross-legged by the fire. “I’ll take first watch.”

They fell into a pattern after that. She slept while he was on watch, and vise versa. They traveled during the mornings. In the afternoons and evenings, they practiced dance steps. A week into traveling together, bandits ambushed them at a crossroads. She found their archer before he could put an arrow in Galliard’s throat.

In the next town, they found a seamstress with bolts of silk on display and left with one more costume and a handful fewer coins than they had arrived with. Cadi counted what remained over and over. It was odd to think that this much _gold_ could come back in without a body falling.

“Ready when you are!” Galliard called.

Cadi stood and shook out the flowing skirt of her new costume. “Let’s go.”

They made it to Y’ren at the start of summer and took rooms at The Wayward Traveller. The bar was sticky, and the tables scarred, but the beds were clean and reasonably comfortable. Cadi went wandering through the streets after they’d had a chance to eat, her knives hidden around her person and her rapier on her hip. She wandered until she found the broader streets of the Verdant Market. There were people here, apprentices walking home after work or going to get a drink with a group of friends. This was a brighter city than Os Kvelya, more open.

She should have known the people would be the same.

Cadi saw the group of soldiers coming her way. There were three of them, all human, two men and a young woman hanging off each other’s shoulders. They weren’t moving like they were on duty, and the way they looked at her said they were not going to just pass by. Cadi ducked down an alley, climbed up onto a crate, and made for the roof. But the rooftops here had clay tiles. They broke under her boots. She managed to save herself from crashing to the cobblestones, but not quietly. She rolled sideways as one of the tiles came down after her and smashed to pieces.

“What’s this?” one of the soldiers started, “street rat?”

“Pretty one.” That was the woman’s voice.

Cadi pushed herself to her feet. She wanted to reach for her knives, but these were soldiers. Killing them would get her marked in more cities than this one. And Galliard. She took a slow step back.

“What are you doing out here? I thought all the elves stayed up by the castle?”

“She’s with me.”

Two of the guards whirled around.

Cadi almost sagged with relief. Instead, she made herself pull her hand away from her knife and went up on tiptoes, shifting until she could see him. He was armed and armored, his crossbow hanging lazily from one hand. She caught his gaze and gave a minute shake of her head. He winked. Then he shifted his weight onto his back heel, almost posing, and tilted his head to one side.

“What do you call three guards who corner one person down an alley?” Galliard brought up the crossbow, a bolt loaded and trained on the man in the center. His voice echoed off the stone walls. “Target practice.”

The guard who had not turned snorted. Then his face screwed up. A rough guffaw forced its way out of his mouth. A moment later, he collapsed to the ground, convulsing with hysterical laughter. He swiped at Cadi as she stepped over him, but missed. She darted around his friends before they realized where she was going. Then she was out of the alley and by Galliard’s side.

“That was horrible.”

“Hey!” he leaned the crossbow on his shoulder, “it worked, didn’t it?”

Together, they started running back toward the inn. Cadi could have slipped off into the shadows. She could have quickened her pace and left him far behind her. She did neither.

In the inn that night, Cadi stared at the ceiling and thought. The best way in Elvish to say ‘you’re welcome’ was _aon dyled ie-dyledai-ve_. No debt is owed.

She had saved his life two times she could point to with confidence. Every other fight was less sure. Less clear-cut. A bolt shot at the exact right moment for them to never know, a dagger thrown, or a spell spoken. And he’d saved her life one time she knew about.

Those guards would have gutted her for sport and left her in the alley, she had no doubt.

So she was one up on lives saved. That should put her ahead, right? But there are all those little fights where she did not know which one of them saved who and— and how could she measure the rest of it? How did she measure not worrying about getting enough to feed herself and not having to let people any closer than she chose? What value could she place on not getting paid to kill anymore?

Cadi got to her feet and silently padded across the floor to the tiny mirror on the wall. The hollows beneath her eyes were gone. And so was the purple-red that had stained both cheeks like the shadows of bruises that refused to fade. She was left with a glimmer of pink and a lighter step. Every day since she got the costume, she had checked, waiting for it to fade back to violet. It hadn’t yet.

No debt is owed.

She returned to the narrow bed and curled up, slipping her hand beneath the pillow to touch the hilt of the knife she kept there.

Maybe not, Cadi allowed, but she had better reasons to stay.


End file.
